The Prayer Of The Pharisees

In the reading by Abraham Heschel God is portrayed as a very personable and caring God. He has similar feelings as do parents with their own children. When they are doing well or have had good things going on, he feels joy and gratification. When they are acting out or have had something negative happen in their life, he feels sadness and anger. He is said to not judge based on just the bare facts.

God is our creator, He loves and protect us, He wants us to be safe and happy.

Our God is loving, kind and merciful, but there is another side to His personality, the side that defends and fights for His people. Paul declares we must know the “goodness and severity of God.” To understand the full character of God we must read the entire Bible. God is a lover of His creation and He is a warrior who fights for those whom He loves. The author makes an excellent point that since we are made in His image we must take on every aspect of the character

To understand God you must first get a decent understanding of the bible. The bible has been translated from the

This parable is very applicable to my daily life, as well as society. I can apply this parable to my life by knowing that I was a seed planted in the good soil. I need to remember to continue my course of action and beliefs, no matter how difficult it is. That way, I can live a life lead by the Lord, spread his message, and “bear fruit”.

Who is God? God is the creator of all according to the Christian worldview. As Christians we believe that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (Diffey, 2015, Ch. 3) We trust that God be existent in three persons. After reading the Genesis chapters, I understood that God

Can God truly be defined? Yes and no! It is important to know the facts about God which one can get from studying the Bible. Secondly, it is important to fellowship with God to get to know Him on a personal and intimate level. There are so many characteristics of God as He was and is perfect in all

As a church we have misappropriated the level of judgement dispensed. We understand that all have sinned and that true discipleship requires accountability and discipline, however, the indubitable level must be delivered in a humble and nonjudgemental manner. We must realize the greatest impact for change is empathy, compassion and action. The only way to ensure the action is effective, one must first hear what the people feel as though their issues are. Next we must remove ourselves from a hypocritical place of judgement so that we can full understand and

There is so much negativity and judgement in this world. There needs to be more believers in Jesus Christ. Having more believers will make things better. It will also help to guide other people that need guidance on the right path to righteousness. There are so many people that do not understand the truth about living the right way when it comes down to following Jesus Christ. People who are surrounded by a church community, will have an easier life being a Christian, will be guided by the Ten Commandments, and will learn to have a loving heart for others.

Another note about the symbolic theology— it is also important to know that the statement of “who God is” is not untrue, but the truth is beyond that true statement. As a result of that recognition, we often use parables and metaphors to see if we can make it less “beyond” and more humanly understandable. I would guess it is because there is a limited number of people, or probably none, who are lucky enough to have a physical encounter with God, for we are all living in the End Time. Therefore, “see for yourself” does not work here and we have to rely on symbolic descriptions. However, the problem generated from the symbolism is “misleading” as mentioned previously. (Ware, 2002) Take myself as an example, a lot of times I can understand the

Among the challenge of understanding the people that you are ministering to or with is the challenge of being able to maintain high standards of moral behavior in a challenging environment (Martin.n.d). There is also the challenge of ever changing volunteers and the lack of volunteers (Martin.,n.d). As a Christian leader, we tend to believe that there will always be an abundance of volunteers to serve God but that is not always the case as I have witnessed personally.

Our modern church has difficulty doing this because, as I said a few weeks ago, it too often finds itself identified with the culture. Jesus was a prophet, he stepped away from his culture and therefore saw it objectively—and he paid the price. Are we persecuted? Are we reviled by our culture? What would that even look like? It is hard to imagine this in a church culture that worries about being popular and giving the culture what they want. If we speak prophetically to our culture we will be taking a risk just like Jesus did two thousand years ago. Let’s face it, that culture of division, conflict, comparison, ambition, competition, isn’t only out there, it’s in here (point to heart). We need to first speak prophetically to ourselves—we need to empty ourselves like the Christ did—remember, “Blessed are the poor spirit, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”.

A sentiment common to almost any organization is that the one fact that remains constant is change. As society changes, and human understanding grows, any organization that maintains a static posture, assures its demise. Churches and Christian organizations are no exception. The gospel may remain the same, but the method for communicating it must speak to the audience to assure understanding. The Christian leader must be prepared to meet this challenge by incorporating an effective model for change into his theology of leadership in order to keep the ministry relevant and effective. Searching for such a change agent can prove to be challenging as well. To aid in this search, four

a) Christians believe many different things about God’s nature; due to the huge spectrum of Christians that there are. However, as a general rule they perceive God as being one of the following four things:

The first source to which Christian theology looks for it's teaching is the New Testament. It is the New Testament, which unfolds the divine plan introduced in the Old, and it is by the New Testament revelation that the Old Testament revelation is interpreted. For this reason all Christians theologians have made the New Testament their primary source for data in constructing views of God and His relation to the world. We must place all theology in context. As the Old Testament affirms, God is incomparable. Isaiah writes that we dare not make our God out of gold, or carry the divine around in a neat package to sit here or stand there. God reminds Israel, and all peoples, that "I am God and there is no other, I am God and there is none like me."